Potentially offensive or not, Hofstede really believes in the power of culture so much so that he remains the steward of a massive research project begun more than 50 years ago by his late father. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Part of the Freakonomics Series) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J . An expert doesn't so much argue the various sides of an issue as plant his flag firmly on one side. thats always there. And I think this community-spiritedness has been built in us since we were very young. And they pass another fish, who says, Hey, boys, hows the water? And theyre like, What the heck is water?. Well call it The U.S. Is Very Different from Other Countries So Lets Stop Pretending Its Not. Its the first in a series of episodes where well look at different pieces of that difference. A recent paper by a Harvard postdoc named Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen analyzed Scandinavian emigration from 1850 to 1920, when roughly 25 percent of the Scandinavian population left their countries, a great many coming to the U.S. People of an individualistic mindset were more prone to migrate than their collectivistic neighbors, she writes. China is also very collectivistic and so are the Southeast Asian countries, but not Japan. As we heard, the first four dimensions originated with the I.B.M. I asked Hofstede what he would advise if a given country did want to change its culture? And not attending enough to contextual factorsopportunities that presented themselves, being in the right place at the right time. It shouldnt surprise anyone that individualism might contribute to inequality or at least, as Henrich puts it, the justification of inequality. And in culture, uncertainty means not knowing the ritual, not knowing how status-worthy or blameworthy some action is. And then theres the big C, the stuff that we have these big conversations about, that we do these incredible studies about, which is really about the worldview of groups of people coming together, in a community, in a nation, in a family, right? And that happens a lot. SFU will never request our users provide or confirm their Computing ID or password via email or by going to any web site. Needless to say, it's had a lot of success. In another condition, they were wearing tattoos and nose rings and purple hair. the benefits to an individual from study and engagement in a topic. GELFAND: If youre in contexts where theres a lot of rules, you develop from a very early age that impulse control. You look at parents and how they treat their kids art. Although it is more self-help than traditional economics it shares many of the weaknesses of more serious works in the discipline. Im a professor of artificial sociality at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Were trying to buy time, save time. GELFAND: All cultures have social norms, these unwritten rules that guide our behavior on a daily basis. GELFAND: And it was fascinating because when people were wearing their normal face, there was no difference. Citation styles for Freakonomics How to cite Freakonomics for your reference list or bibliography: select your referencing style from the list below and hit 'copy' to generate a citation. The third measures masculinity versus femininity in a given culture. I personally expect at some point in the not very far future to have another wave of youthful optimism and find a way to say, Look, guys, we can do it, the future could be bright. Better Essays. Why have rules if you dont use them? Chronic threat meaning a country is prone to natural disasters, or disease, or hostile invaders. I know that wasnt your intention. "The conventional wisdom is often wrong.". People who went out to California, I would say if we gave them the tight-loose mindset quiz, they were probably on the looser mindset. I do think that humanity as a whole is sort of evolving to being more reflective. But heres the thing about culture: it can be really hard to measure. When something is not easily measured, it often gets talked about in mushy or ideological terms. Consider the prominent Muppets Bert and Ernie. Also, he uses some very bold examples (crime rates versus abortion, drug dealership, cheating teachers, etc) to make some very simple . She likes to eat human food. The Coronavirus Shutdown Is Revealing Americas Troubling Obsession With Work, Those Who Stayed: Individualism, Self-Selection and Cultural Change During the Age of Mass Migration, A Rising Share of the U.S. Black Population Is Foreign Born, 10 Minutes with Geert Hofstede on Indulgence versus Restraint, 10 Minutes withGeert Hofstede on Masculinity versus Femininity, 10 Minutes with Geert Hofstede on Individualisme versus Collectivisme, Dimensionalizing Cultures: The Hofstede Model in Context, A Re-Inquiry of Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions: A Call for 21st Century Cross-Cultural Research, The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Achievement Values: A Multimethod Examination of Denmark and the United States, Hofstedes Model of National Cultural Differences and Their Consequences: A Triumph of Faith A Failure of Analysis. Some of the measurable differences were a bit odd. This episode was produced byBrent Katz. The same experiment was done in other, non-WEIRD countries, like Ghana and Zimbabwe. Meaning, if you grew up in someplace like the U.S., when you look at an image youre more likely to pay attention to whats in the foreground, in the center. Heres how he puts it in his latest book: You cant separate culture from psychology or psychology from biology, because culture physically rewires our brains and thereby shapes how we think. One example he gives is literacy. We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. Ultimatum Game Bargaining Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon, U.S. Student Tells of Pain Of His Caning In Singapore, Singapores Relations With U.S. And we see that the combination of high individualism, high masculinity, and high short-termism can produce some chaos, at the very least. Share. HOFSTEDE: Thats my idea. He started working as an engineer during turbulent years of rebuilding, and soon became a personnel manager. The authors seek to find simple answers to complicated world problems. NEAL: We realized that the grind is unsustainable. NEAL: I think thats always been a tension in Black culture, around this idea of Americas rugged individualism and the collectivity of Blackness that was born out of necessity because of segregation. Its focus on individual behaviour also lends itself to a preoccupation with manipulating individual choices. Why arent all national cultures converging by now? HENRICH: Im Joe Henrich. The comedians John Oliver, Hannah Gadsby, and Kumail Nanjiani all grew up outside the U.S. Neal is a professor of African and African-American studies. GELFAND: My own sweet Portuguese water dog, Pepper, I mean, that dog is just gigantic. HENRICH: And the case I make is its been highly unsuccessful to just pick up institutions that evolved in Western societies and transport them to drop them in Africa or the Middle East or places like that, because there needs to be a fit between how people think about the world, their values, worldviews, motivations, and the affordances of the institution. You may have noticed that Hofstede neglected to mention a certain country that we Americans tend to care about quite a bit. A dream team of directors e. The snob effect occurs when an individual's demand for a specific product increases when the number of units of that product other people purchase increases. Australia and Brazil are also loose. Chinese, in that respect, are very like the Americans. We should be nice to one another. But when push comes to shove, most of the time it doesnt go that way. Because when youre living inside a culture well, thats the culture you know; it is what it is. You can never admit weakness or failure. And he said the reason was that he was a young postdoc, and he had holes in his jeans. So I would be very interested in knowing whether theres any data on the ethnic component of homicide and suicide. Capital W-E-I-R-D, which stands for: HENRICH: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. In a society of small power distance, a lot. Henrich has also observed this about Americans. And its another dimension on which the U.S. is a substantial outlier. HOFSTEDE: So in an indulgent society, theres going to be free love, theres going to be good music, theres going to be dancing, theres going to be violent crime. This individualism has produced tremendous forward progress and entrepreneurial energy. Which is more dangerous, a gun or a . Freakonomics (2005) aplica el anlisis econmico racional a situaciones cotidianas, desde las citas en lnea hasta la compra de una casa. There are plenty of looser people in tight countries and vice versa. Freakonomics is therefore NOT the book that I would recommend to anyone interested in (a) learning economic theory, (b) learning about how economists think, or (c) understanding the world or thinking of ways to improve it. And in a collectivistic society, a person is like an atom in a crystal. The two players dont know each other. What was in these surveys? For the last few months, the city-state has seen just a handful of Covid-19 cases. People get less interested. Follow. The Pros and Cons of America's (Extreme) Individualism. Each week, Freakonomics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn't) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything. Whereas we usually describe a scent by saying something that it smells like.. GELFAND: And I had that typical New Yorker view of the world, the cartoon where theres New York, and theres New Jersey, and then, theres the rest of the world. Theyre what we call tight cultures. The United States, you may not be surprised to learn, is on the loose end of the spectrum although not in the top five. SFU users should ignore all messages requesting Computing ID and/or password information, no matter how authentic they may appear. The incentives of just any regular person are greatly shown because money or personal gain can take over any man or woman no matter how old. Controlling for a variety of other factors, they found that looser countries the U.S., Brazil, Italy, and Spain have had roughly five times the number of Covid cases and nearly nine times as many deaths as tighter countries. HOFSTEDE: He decided to take a job there. 470. Stay up-to-date on all our shows. GELFAND: Exactly. Hes horrified by my dishwasher-loading behavior. Whereas people from less individualistic societies tend to be better at making relative-size judgments. GELFAND: Were trained from a very early age not just to be independent, but to be better. Its also important to recognize that even though were really connected, still people are largely in their echo chambers, interacting with people who they know. Levitt's research on teacher cheating using Chicago Public Schools data.Clip from the 2010 documentary "Freakonomics: The Movie". Do you know what you are? Uncertainty in economics means something very akin to risk. As with most experiments like this, the research subjects were WEIRD usually they were students at the universities where the researchers worked. And life is an adventure. During the Cold War. The best thing you can become is yourself. It always was unsustainable, but was made even more acute to us during the pandemic. So were all constraining one another through our collective culture. Why not? And you speak fast because I dont want to waste a lot of time talking. NEAL: As someone who specialized in the African-American experience, and is African-American myself, I often fall back on the way the late Amiri Baraka described Black culture as a changing same.. HENRICH: Two players divide a sum of money. All contents Freakonomics. Why Does the Most Monotonous Job in the World Pay $1 Million? In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. So that leads to justifying more inequality. GELFAND: We have a whole new map of the U.S. where we can actually rank-order the U.S. 50 states in terms of how much threat they have. It turns out that Americans were among the least likely to conform. HOFSTEDE: This is actually a little bit of an unfortunate name. GELFAND: They were trained to ask for help in city streets and in stores. In a society in which 95 percent of adults are highly literate, he writes, people have a thicker corpus callosum than a society in which only 5 percent of people are highly literate. The corpus callosum is the bunch of nerve fibers that unites the two brain hemispheres. But that makes sense. This is the flip side of the idea we started out with in this episode that is, why its hard for the U.S. to simply import successful policies from elsewhere. Michele GELFAND: The people that came to New York early on, they were from all sorts of different cultural backgrounds, and thats helped produce the looseness that exists to this day. HOFSTEDE: I like this question a lot. Heres one of the questions they asked. We just need to do it. And you could have a perfect storm in that direction. They can freely float about. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. I do this for you and you do this for me. Folks who come from a collective standpoint where, I do this for you, but youre doing this for us thats a very, very different way of seeing the world. 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